


Not Us

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 10000-30000 words, Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Blow Job, Clones, Episode Related, Episode: s07e03 Fragile Balance, Established Relationship, First Time, Future Fic, Graphic Sex, M/M, Requited Love, Sex, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-20
Updated: 2007-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:55:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of 'Fragile Balance,' Daniel had himself cloned so that his teenage clone could go off with Jack's. Ten years later, Jack's still running the SGC with Daniel by his side, and the powers that be are interested in hiring the clones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Us

**Author's Note:**

> Even though this is a tag for 'Fragile Balance,' it willfully ignores the prop evidence in that episode and takes Jack's year of birth as being 1957 based on his spoken line about being forty in 'Brief Candle' (c. 1997). Because it made a couple of sentences prettier, for the purposes of this fic Daniel's birthday is July 8, 1964.

### November 2003

"You did _what_?"

Daniel didn't look up from what he was doing. "I asked Thor to reproduce Loki's work and make another clone. A clone of me."

"And he _did_ this?"

"Mm-hm. He did it for me, partly. A favor. Let a version of me go out and see what I could have been and done if ... " He shrugged. Kept clicking away with the mouse, moving glyphs around on the screen.

"Partly," Jack echoed.

Daniel said, "Mostly he did it for you," and looked up from his work.

Jack stared at him for a long time. Daniel looked back, calm, unguarded, open.

"And _you_ did it," Jack began, treading carefully, "so there'd be somebody else around who ... " Who knew where Jack had been. Who knew what Jack knew. Who was in the same boat. So he wouldn't be the only one of him in the universe.

"Partly," Daniel said. "But not mostly."

"So, mostly because ... "

"Yeah," Daniel said, with a brief flicker of smile, and appeared to return his attention to his work. "Mostly because."

Mostly because Jack didn't ever again want to face a world in which Daniel wasn't. Whether he could do anything about it or not. He'd learned that much while Daniel was gone. He hadn't known that Daniel knew. But of course he'd known. He was the only one who'd ever known those kinds of things about Jack. Stupid to think he'd have missed this one. Even if he didn't remember it from before.

"Kind of a sacrifice, don't you think? I mean, since the clone of you will be ... well, you. It'll be like leaving everything behind all over again. I mean, you just got back."

"I didn't have the private resources to construct the kind of cover for him that the Air Force did for yours, but he'll make out OK; I always did. I'm used to starting over. He'll have fun. He knows that I'm still here doing the work that was important to him. He'll be able to pursue intellectual sidelines that I never had time for. Computer stuff, for example. Too much changed while I was away, and I don't have time to devote to keeping ahead of the curve on that. He's going to be a force to reckon with."

"Yeah, a teenage hacker with _your_ brain. Scary thought."

"Isn't it?" Daniel looked adorably smug.

Jack said, "But you digress. Answer the question."

"I was trying not to."

"I know."

Daniel sighed and sat back in his chair. "Not a sacrifice, Jack. It's what I wanted to do. Part of me wanted to go with that clone of you. Thor made it so that part of me could."

Slowly, emphasizing each syllable: "And you wanted to go because ... ?"

"Because he's you. Almost as much as you are. All the, um, attachment, loyalty I feel toward you, I feel toward him. He's not just some kid who looks like you and knows some stuff you know. He's you, and he's alone in the world." Daniel shrugged. "You can keep pushing me on this, but you already know the answer, and you already know there's no point. Let it go, Jack. It's done. You want to forget about that clone the same way you wanted to forget about the android. You should go back to doing that."

"You know that what you've done is a _massive_ security risk."

"If you don't tell on me I won't tell on you."

Jack sighed. "So ... are we ever gonna talk about what we're talking around right now?"

"Not unless you push it."

"You've known ... this ... about me ... for a while?"

"Now, see, that qualifies as pushing it."

"Can't I be curious? I mean, was it something you" -- _fuck_ \-- "saw while you were ascended, or what?"

"Not that I remember. But my memory of being ascended is sketchy at best. I can't promise you I didn't invade your privacy, deliberately or inadvertently. It's something I figured out since I got back. Reading the mission reports, trying to retrieve my subjective memories of the events described in them, thinking back all the time on how things were, how things developed, the way the unit has evolved and changed. The way we've behaved toward each other. I think it was a matter of ... perspective. Objective distance? But I can't say for sure that what felt like intuition and deduction wasn't based on knowledge I obtained somehow while I was ascended and just don't remember how I came by. That answer your question?"

Twenty times over. As usual. "Yeah."

When Jack didn't push it any further, just stood with his back against the closed door thinking about things he shouldn't be thinking about, Daniel said, quietly, "And yes, some of it was a feeling that we deserved a shot. Fate or Loki handed us an opportunity. But it may not come to anything. With every hour that passes they will be less us. They may turn into people who want nothing to do with each other. So that couldn't be the only reason. But it was _a_ reason."

"Why couldn't it be the only reason? Isn't something like that worth risking everything for?"

Daniel looked straight at him. "Yes. But sometimes you still have to decide not to take that risk."

Jack was silent for a long time. Finally he said, "Yeah."

There was another long silence. Then Daniel said, "Maybe they'll be happy, Jack."

  


### December 2013

Jack turned in the big bed, pushing closer against Daniel, pulling the covers up over their shoulders. He'd grown up in Colorado, a pretty temperate place, but he liked the air chill when he slept. Daniel had grown up in Colorado, too, but he had the metabolism of a Bedouin. Jack spent the winters making sure Daniel was warm enough, and the summers without air-conditioning, a small price to pay for getting to watch Daniel roam shirtless in cut-offs around the house.

They'd spent the day in meetings, which they both hated, but which were necessary to deal with the latest incursions on their private ownership of a company that had become way more successful way faster than it was supposed to. Space was the way to go these days, but engineering went hand in hand with information technologies, and the combination of Daniel's groundbreaking AI work and Jack's work in aerospace had been unbeatable. They should go public, take the money and run. But neither of them was willing to give up control just yet. Neither of them was willing to put their work into other people's hands, or give shareholders any sway over how they ran the business.

Despite their eighty-hour weeks, Daniel was on his second doctorate, some jumble of interdisciplinary terminology that Jack remained intentionally obtuse about. In the cracks of their eighty-hour weeks, Jack made time to fly for pleasure, and ski, and play hockey. At this twenty-five he'd still managed to avoid the collection of injuries he'd already accumulated by the first twenty-five. Daniel had convinced him to stop test-piloting, citing the perverse balance sheet of fate.

They'd stayed in the Denver high school together for a year. Then they'd gotten themselves into an accelerated program at a magnet school, finishing a year later, and taken early admission at the same college, which was equally good for computer science and aeronautical engineering. They'd argued the whole way, but were inseparable best friends, and lived together more like orphaned brothers. They'd thrown themselves heart and soul into their new lives, and seldom talked about where they'd come from; it was enough for each of them to know that the other knew and remembered. They missed the same things; there was no point moaning about it. Jack had never thanked Daniel for coming with him.

They'd been sleeping together almost from the start. In their second year of college, they started having sex. Neither of them had dated much, and both of them had long since figured out where things had stood in their previous lives. Though Jack had ragged Daniel mercilessly over every apparent crush and flirtation, and though Daniel had assumed that Jack was getting it regularly somewhere, they discovered that these bodies both lost their technical virginity that night. It was very weird. It was a massive rush.

It was the way things were meant to be, and they both knew it.

He could still remember the feeling of pushing into Daniel that first time. This body had been nineteen, and its own hand -- and more recently Daniel's -- were all it had ever known. In his old body, Jack hadn't had sex for a couple of years, since his bitterly failed attempt to fuck Daniel Jackson out of his thoughts before Daniel ascended. He was so shocked by the sensation of being inside Daniel that he couldn't come; for nearly thirty seconds all he could do was gasp Daniel's name into his spine. Then Daniel let out a high, ragged sound, and moved, and clenched, and came on him in a muted convulsion. Jack shot suddenly, without warning -- an orgasm so powerful it hurt wrenching out of him. He came forever into Daniel's body, then collapsed on it, heaving, Daniel jerking and shuddering underneath him, all up against him. It was the most intense sexual experience of either of his lifetimes.

He'd stroked and kissed and nuzzled through the afterglow. He'd been overwhelmingly affectionate with Daniel since they'd started this new life. When they were younger it was all roughhousing and playfulness, teenage bodies brimming with energy and hormones; later it had turned into a casual, easy familiarity. But Daniel had always soaked it up, just the way he had in their old lives. Now there was a poignant intensity to it. Daniel was melted underneath him, boneless but still trembling. Beautiful Daniel, who'd grown out of his teenage awkwardness into a quietly stunning young man. Who would only get more beautiful the older he got. Daniel, who always had the words for things, dead silent, his eyes closed, his hands still fisted in the pillows.

Jack was shocked to feel tears sting his eyes. "Danny," he said into his neck, blurred through kisses. "Danny. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He could feel confusion ripple through Daniel's spent body. "Why are you sorry?" Daniel said, softly, clearly.

"Because I'm not him." Orgasm had blown all his shields off. The truth just came out, without thought, no chance to bite it back. "I know it was him you wanted. This should have been him. _I can't be him_. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He pressed his face into the thick silk of Daniel's hair, drinking in the sweet scent. This might be all he ever had of this. Daniel wasn't the kind of guy who settled. He'd deny himself before he settled. They'd go on sleeping together, masturbating each other, but if this depth of connection had fallen short for Daniel it would be the last time Jack ever got to be part of him.

"Jack?"

Jack winced his eyes shut tight, tried to soak in the feel of Daniel under him, around him, joined to him, burn the memory of it into his body. "Mm?"

"Next time I want you to stay like this. Stay in me. Go to sleep like this. But right now I need to turn over. Pull out, OK?"

Blinking, uncertain, Jack withdrew gingerly; both of them shuddered. He shifted to the side and went to reach for tissues; Daniel said "Leave it" and caught his arm, pulled it around him as he burrowed in to the front of Jack, all the long sweet length of him, soft sticky genitals lumping against Jack's, pillow plumped under both their heads.

Daniel kissed him softly on the mouth. It was the first time their lips had ever touched. A whine came out of Jack, very soft. Daniel drew back enough to see him, but his face stayed close enough for Jack to feel Daniel's breath. "You're you, Jack. I know you've never thought that. You think he got to have your house and your life and your future. By now maybe he's gotten to have your Daniel, too. It worries me a little that you think that way. But I don't. I loved who you were and I love who you are." His calm, level tone faltered: "God, Jack -- I've waited so long for what we just did. I thought you'd never ... " His eyes slid closed, in a crease of pain.

Jack pushed closer to him, took his mouth and probed it open, kissing him deeply, a long wet moaning slide of tongue. "I wanted this forever," he said against Daniel's lips. "I was trying to be a gentleman. I was waiting 'til our bodies grew up enough, that's all."

"I know," Daniel said, blurred against his mouth. "I know. Except ... I thought maybe you were waiting for me to ... you know, look like me again ... "

"I don't care what you look like," Jack said, kissing him and kissing him. "Daniel ... Daniel ... christ, you're so beautiful it hurts, but that's gravy, that's wrapping paper ... " He kissed Daniel deeply, fiercely, and then suddenly drew back. "Wait a minute. You thought _I'd_ never? Why was this up to me?"

"Because you're the one who didn't choose this," Daniel had said, looking at him quietly, blue eyes unwavering.

Jack looked at him now, stroked his sleeping head. He honest-to-god ached with love for this extraordinary soul. Somewhere along the line he'd come to think of the others as the poor schmucks who got stuck with all the responsibility while he and Daniel got to go off and live the lives they wanted to. He still missed Carter and Teal'c and Hammond and Fraiser, Jake and Bra'tac; hell, he missed Harriman and Siler, and he missed going through the Stargate, and sometimes he still reached for things he didn't own anymore, looked for pictures of Sara and Charlie on the mantel, felt a sense of dislocation. Sometimes he felt unmoored without the structure of the Air Force to buttress everything he did; he missed the discipline, the uniform, the pride of his rank and his service. But he felt sorry for the guys who'd had to go on locked in their miserable isolation, martyring themselves to duty, the weight of the universe on their shoulders.

He hoped they were still alive. He hoped they'd found some happiness along the way. And he never, ever wanted to know whether they were, or they had.

His body was barely more than half as old, now, as the body he'd left behind. Daniel's was seven years younger than the one he'd been in when Jack had met him. Technically, the body Daniel had left behind wasn't even that body; he'd already been re-created once.

He shouldn't be thinking about this stuff. He'd gone ten years almost never thinking about this stuff. But the Air Force had taken an interest in their company's work, and re-opened the whole damn can of worms.

They'd argued for a few days about who should take the meeting, once representatives had worked their way up the ladder of underlings. Finally agreed that they should share the misery. No reason the Air Force would send O'Neill. Less reason they would send Jackson. It probably wouldn't be anyone they knew. But the Air Force had always kept tabs on him; it had been insanely risky letting him loose into the world. It was a given that they'd found out about Daniel a long time ago. There was no point in playing coy. He and Daniel could have disappeared if they'd wanted to; they'd chosen to stay in the U.S. and build what they wanted to build. Six years, since they'd developed their first prototypes, applied for their first patents. Within a month or two of the night they'd first had sex. Odd to think back on that now. The Boston dorm room. It had been winter then, too.

He remembered Daniel shivering into his arms. Daniel had gotten up for some reason, wrapped in a blanket to look out the window at the urban stars or write in his journal or something. He'd come back to bed half frozen. Jack had warmed him with his body; the rising heat under the blankets had been like a drug. He'd begged Daniel to fuck him; Daniel had resisted, but all the reasons were past-life things, former-life things, former-body things. Daniel had thought he was too alpha, too top, that he wouldn't like it. Daniel assumed a lot about what had happened to his previous body in prison. Daniel hadn't wanted this first night to be poisoned by a bad experience. Daniel had said it was really OK with him if it stayed the way it was, he was happy to play catcher, he didn't have to be the one to penetrate. He'd dug his heels in so stubbornly that Jack had blinked hard and backed off, taken aback to think that Daniel might actually be repulsed by the idea. He didn't know whether Daniel had had anal intercourse in his life before; they'd never traded sexual histories, there'd been a tacit agreement that if they did that, it would be later, after they'd filled in the blank slates of these bodies' sexual experience. He hadn't backed off to change tactics; he was genuinely shaken.

He'd never thought that there might be ways in which Daniel wouldn't want him because he was male. He'd only thought about the ways that Daniel might not want him because he wasn't O'Neill.

In his haste to reassure, Daniel had cracked and admitted how badly he wanted it that way. After that it was all heat and moaning breaths and Daniel's slick fingers up inside him, and he hadn't thought it could get much more intense than what they'd done a few hours earlier, but when he was on his knees and Daniel was sliding into him he found out that he was wrong. The universe imploded in a blinding dazzle. He came _everywhere_. They had to wipe down the headboard and change the bedding afterward just to be able to sleep dry. He'd feel the first stroke of that sweet, curved cock across his prostate for the rest of his life.

Daniel stirred in his arms, turned, pushed an erection lazily against his. "Stop thinking about them," he said softly.

"I was thinking more about us. About the first times."

"Mmm." Daniel smiled into his neck. "Never gets old, though, does it."

"No. It never does." He nuzzled down for Daniel's mouth, moaned and felt himself slicken with precome when Daniel sucked on his tongue. There was nothing in the world more erotic than a sleepy Daniel. _Let me do this to your cock_, Daniel's tongue said, stroking across his, licking it, teasing it. A helpless moan came out of him, and Daniel moved down his body, pushing him onto his back, taking the covers with him because he knew the chill turned Jack on. He spread Jack's legs with one hand and reached under his pillow for the lube with the other. Jack arched into his mouth, nearly coming, and Daniel kept him right there on the brink until his fingers were slicked. Then he moved up to lick a chill-hardened nipple. He bit down while he pushed two fingers inside. Jack fisted the bottom sheet. No, this never got old.

Daniel sucked his nipple and stroked his prostate lightly, slick light fingertip touches that spiraled him up into floating bliss and kept him there for a long time. Daniel's thumb caressed slow circles over his balls. Finally he licked down the front of Jack's body in one long, hot trail of heat and tongued the head of Jack's penis into his mouth. Jack drove his skull back hard into the pillow, gritting his teeth, arching onto Daniel's hand. The slick fingertips firmed on the gland, rubbing in the same slow circles as his thumb. His tongue teased and caressed, then blurred into an undulation of heat and saliva as he tightened his mouth and started to suck. "Daniel," Jack breathed. "Ah, god, Daniel ... " He came in an aching swell, hips rising; Daniel's hand followed them up, pressing sharply into the gland as he took Jack's spurting cock down his throat. Jack let out something like a sob as the ejaculation went on and on. Daniel could make him come forever. Sometimes it felt as though he stopped coming only because Daniel let him, that if Daniel decided to he could keep it from ever ending.

He kept sucking and stroking after Jack was milked dry. Jack stayed sensitive and aroused for a while after orgasm, and Daniel had learned to tend that, cater to it. Sometimes his fingers and his tongue were enough, and he'd ease Jack gently, erotically off into sleep. This time Jack touched his head. Said, "Daniel. Please."

Daniel came out of him and off him in a delicious slide, moved half over him, brushed lips along his jaw, over his mouth. "Been a while," he said. "You're tight."

"Start slow," Jack said. "Work up to it." He meant the deep, slow pounding he needed to feel, the pressure, the friction, the fullness. "Want it inside me, Daniel. All you've got."

He'd done Daniel on the dining-room table when they got home from work, grinding deeply into him; really deep penetration sent Daniel into orbit, and he'd shot profusely. But there was a lot to be said for being twenty-five, and good knees was only the start. Two or three full loads in a night was a major benefit. Jack needed to be fucked hard, and frequently, but what he really craved, what really left him sated and content, was that feeling of fluid filling him, the stimulation of hard shots up deep inside him. Daniel shot really, really hard.

In answer Daniel turned him, moved between his legs as he got up on his knees. But when he reached for the headboard Daniel said, "No. Down," and put a hand on his neck, pressing him down onto the mattress and spreading his legs wider with his knees. Jack groaned and pushed the pillow up and out of the way, braced his bent arms against the buffer of it. Slicking himself, Daniel pressed against him so he would feel it on the inside of his thigh, feel Daniel's hand stroking his own cock. He knew most of Jack's kinks now, and he capitalized on all of them. Thinking about that made Jack think of the oils and sex toys in the drawer, things they hadn't played with yet but had gradually started accumulating. He could hear a soft click as Daniel's lips pulled back in a smile. He always had been able to read Jack's mind.

"Soon," Daniel said, in his rich, low bedroom voice. "This now."

Jack nodded against the mattress, hands tightening on the pillow in anticipation. Oh, god, oh _god_ he loved putting himself in Daniel's hands. The only things hotter than this were when Daniel took him by force, on the rare days when he was ravenous and demanding, and the way Daniel yielded to him, melting in his hands, intensely turned on by the act of submission.

He groaned deeply as Daniel nosed into position against him, spread his cheeks wide. The firm, assured entry lasted forever, a long slow burning push. Daniel liked to be teased; Daniel liked to be made to beg. Jack liked it long and slow and unstoppable, a steady surging increase of sweet, unbearable penetration.

"Oh god," he gasped into the mattress, driving his face down into it. "Oh god. Oh fuck. Yes."

Daniel angled for the prostate and didn't let up. He worked in a supple flexion of spine, rolling his lower body forward, hands on Jack's hipbones pulling him back onto each slow thrust. The rhythm was slow and steady but intense, focused. This wasn't long lazy Sunday-morning sex that went on for hours, Daniel behind him murmuring into his ear, Daniel's slow sweet hand on his cock. This was strong, muscular, targeted fucking meant to leave him deeply delved, deeply sated.

"Ah, _fuck_," he said, his body coming alive, flooding with heat as the slick friction radiated up his backbone and out into his limbs. "Christ. Harder. _Harder_."

Daniel shortened his strokes, nailing the swelling gland on each pass. His thrusts got faster and harder until they were hard jabs and Jack's body was jerking with each spike of blinding pleasure.

"Oh god I'm gonna come again," he burst out, straightarming the headboard, shoving back onto the next thrust. "Fuck me, hard, hard -- "

With a broken grunt as the stimulation drove him to the edge, Daniel gripped Jack's hips and doubled the speed, doubled the force. Jack could feel it when the safety slipped off. Daniel hammered his ass, hammered his prostate, fucking him tight and close and hard enough to jar the bedframe. Jack shouted into the mattress, hoarse and uncontrolled, and wrenched into orgasm, his groin spasming, ripples of intense contractions choking down on Daniel's cock. Daniel rammed tight home and stayed there, riding him, coming into him, flooding him, filling him. He swore he could taste it in the back of his throat. His shout was trailed by a long, ragged cry, and he deflated like a punctured balloon, helplessly absorbing the last hard pumping impacts.

Daniel collapsed on him, flushed and shaking, his skin burning. Jack eased his knees back to lie flat, twitching when his hypersensitized penis touched the sheet. It pulsed weakly a couple more times, pressed between his body and the mattress, and then he was done. Filled. Complete. Exhausted. He tried halfheartedly to move his arm, then said, in a drugged slur, "Covers. Up. Over you."

Daniel fumbled down with a loose, sloppy arm. He managed to get them covered, then subsided into profound limpness. They lay there for a long time, unable to move, uninterested in moving, just letting their breath and heartbeats slow, basking in the connection of flesh. Daniel would sleep on him like this. When he woke up, if he'd hardened again, he'd push back in and rock, deep and slow, until he came again. Sometimes Jack wasn't sure if he didn't love that best of all, feeling the slow swell of orgasm crest over Daniel without being distracted by his own.

"You're scared," Daniel said against the back of his head, as they were falling asleep. "You get like that when you're scared. Needing it hard like that."

"I know," he said. "It's OK. I'm OK. You're here. Go to sleep." He thought he might not be making sense, but he knew that Daniel would understand him.

"It might not be them," Daniel said. "It probably won't be them."

"I know," Jack said. "It's OK. Cross that bridge." Slurred, sleepy, succumbing to the weighty drag of blissful sleep, he said, "I love you, Daniel. I love you so _fucking_ much."

"I love you too," Daniel said softly into his hair, arms over his, legs against his, body covering him, weighting him, sheltering him. They slept, deeply, warmly, and when he woke Daniel was rocking in him, soft broken needy moans against the back of his neck, and he was hardening between his own belly and the body-heated bed, and he whispered, "Yeah, oh yeah," and "That's it, that's it, come on, baby, come," and Daniel pulsed in him again, hands clenching on the backs of his, fingers twined through his fingers. And that one was for Daniel, because Daniel was scared, too, and afterwards Daniel drew slowly out and they turned flush against each other and Jack came into Daniel's softening groin with his tongue in Daniel's mouth and Daniel drinking his moans, and he didn't release his mouth for a long time after that, but kissed him deep and slow and wet and tender until Daniel went back to sleep.

Jack lay there dozing and breathing Daniel's breath until dawn came up in the windows and it was time to move toward a warm shower, coffee, and the teleconferences that would tell them whether or not they would have to look the future of their pasts in the face.

***

The NID operative came to see General O'Neill without an appointment. When Walter told him that it was about the aerospace-and-AI outfit that the Pentagon was trying to get the SGC into bed with, Jack said yeah whatever let him in but it's gonna be quick.

Daniel was sitting across the desk from him; Daniel was in his office about half the day since he'd pulled out of SG-1 to consult. Teal'c had been off on Dakara for years and was about to inherit leadership of the Free Jaffa from Bra'tac. Carter supervised most of the exploration and kept an eye on research-and-development while liaising with her father, who headed the Tok'ra Council with Selmak. Jack had been planning to send her to check out this rising-star corporation, shake hands with whoever ran it. He'd also been planning to retire as soon as Carter's next promotion came through and he was guaranteed that she'd get the command on his recommendation, but only George knew that, because George was trying to push it along behind the scenes.

He hadn't told Daniel any of this yet, although Daniel might have guessed some of it. He didn't know how Daniel would react; he hadn't known, for a while now, whether Daniel had resigned himself to the solitary widowerhood he'd always assumed for himself, or whether he was patiently waiting for Jack to separate from the service, or whether Jack's retirement would free him to go on his nomadic way at last and spend the rest of his life pursuing quieter, more remote interests. The truth was that he was afraid to find out, and for the last few days he'd been trying to plan a strategy for discussing it with him without chickening out. He'd just turned 56; Daniel would be 50 next summer. Part of him would be seriously pissed if Daniel had been waiting for him; Daniel could and should do a lot better. Daniel got hotter the older he got. Jack only got older.

Military bureaucracy was bad enough -- he did not want to deal with spooks right now. The cold glare he gave the operative should have cracked a stone; what he got in return was an unflappable stare with, god help him, _pity_ at the heart of it. What the fuck?

"So?" he said. "Spill it. Kinda busy here, and you guys know what I think about your whole operation."

The NID was still the vice-president's pet. It was a different vice-president, a decent guy who seemed to use his covert powers only for good, but Jack's antipathy was way too old and deeply ingrained for him to rise above. And come right down to it, no matter who was pulling their strings, for more than ten years their surveillance was what had stood between him and what he'd once believed could have been a happy private life. He was pretty sure he'd poked out those eyes once and for all within a year of making general, but pretty sure wasn't sure enough. He really, really fucking hated these people.

The operative set a memory stick on his desk and took a step back. "I had orders to check out this company the Air Force is thinking about bringing in to consult on R&amp;D. It's jointly run by the two founders. Background checks brought up some serious issues, so they had us surveille the residence. I won't waste any more of your time, General, and I know you don't remember me, but I've been familiar with this program and its personnel since its inception, and I can tell you three things: What's on that stick you need to see, what's on that stick you don't want to see, and what's on that stick is the only copy. I destroyed the rest and made a verbal report to the vice-president, and he said he doesn't give a shit about what's on that stick, but I should give it to you." The operative straightened slightly, as with a memory of a long-lost conditioning to come to attention. "Permission to get out of your hair, General?"

Jack was looking hard at the guy, trying to get his number, trying to remember him. "Yeah," he said. "Sure. Granted. What's left of it." He glanced at Daniel, whose brows went up slightly, as the operative moved to the door, and then his gaze was drawn back to the man, who had turned.

"Sorry, sir. One last thing. Don't view that here. Take it home. Nobody's watching your house." He turned back and opened the door. "Thank you for your time, sir."

"What the fuck?" Jack said softly to Daniel. Daniel shrugged. They both looked at the memory stick, then at Jack's laptop. "You think it's gonna blow up or something? Put some mind-control juju on us?"

Daniel started to say something flippant, then started to say something thoughtful and serious, and then stopped with his mouth open, and then slowly closed his mouth.

_"What?"_ Jack snapped.

"Um ... I think you should take that guy at his word. Check it out at home. Not here."

"What did you just figure out, Daniel?"

"Something I hope I'm wrong about. Or maybe ... actually, yeah, I take that back. Actually I hope I'm right. But I'm not going to say it here."

Staring at Daniel, Jack called, "Wal-TER!"

Harriman popped through the door, saying, "You know there's an intercom right on your -- "

"I'm going home for lunch," Jack said, standing up. "In fact, I'm taking Doctor Jackson with me."

"You're really not," Daniel said, his eyes a little wide, as if he thought that was one of the worst ideas he'd heard in a long time.

"Yes, Daniel, I really am. Walter, do whatever you need to do with my schedule. I'll be back by three or so."

"Yes, sir," Harriman said, with the deep long-suffering sigh that meant Jack's schedule was going to be hell to adjust but he'd been doing stuff like this for so long that there was just no point in protesting anymore.

"Just grab your coat," Jack said to Daniel. "Don't bother changing." Colorado Springs had always been crawling with Air Force personnel and now it was crawling with spaceport personnel since Peterson had been enlarged to accommodate the Daedalus-class fleet. As long as nothing they wore bore the letters SGC, they could run out, briefly, without the rigamarole of switching to street clothes. "I'll meet you in the parking bay."

With a sigh very similar to Harriman's, Daniel went off to do as he was told, something that still did not fail to amaze Jack when it happened, even after a grand total of seventeen years. He went up and started his truck; by the time Daniel came up and got in, the heater had warmed the cab to an almost tolerable-for-Daniel temperature. Jack always considered things like that. He was allowed to consider things like that. It didn't make up for the things he wasn't allowed to consider, but it was something.

They were in his house in twenty minutes, and Daniel was demothballing his personal laptop, which he never used but Daniel insisted he keep ready because you never knew when you'd want a machine that didn't belong to the Air Force. Seemed he was right about that, finally.

"So this is basically going to be some kind of private surveillance on this corporation's CEOs," Daniel summarized, as he plugged the stick into a port and ran a malware scanner from a pen drive of his own. The guy's facility with computers was scary, and something not even Carter knew about him, although Jack was pretty sure Pete suspected and for some reason hadn't outted to her. "Some kind of behavior the vice-president doesn't give a shit about, but he and this operative think you should be aware of." He looked up at Jack, as if waiting for a silver dollar to drop.

Jack gave him an exasperated look. "Whatever you think it is, Daniel, I'm not getting it, OK? Just play the goddamn ... whatever it is."

"I'll run it for you, Jack, but I'm not going to watch."

"You _are_ going to watch. Sit your ass down in that chair."

Daniel didn't sit; he remained standing next to the dining table, his shoulders taking on that stubborn hunch. But when he played the file, he stayed. He just backed away a few steps to lean hipshot against the sideboard. Jack's irritated over-the-shoulder glance found him hugging himself. Hadn't seen him do that in years. Jesus. What the fuck was going _on_?

A full-screen image came on, grainy, of a large, open, upscale residence. Books and gadgets were piled everywhere; it had a lived-in, homey look that most affluent CEOs' apartments, in Jack's limited experience, did not. But these guys were geeks, right? Some kind of brilliant young entrepreneurs or something. He hadn't paid attention. He'd left the pile of reports for Carter to sift through when she got back from her current offworld.

A door opened, closed, locked off camera; there was low laughter, a spoken exchange that Jack couldn't make out but that for some reason raised the hairs on the back of his neck and made his stomach clench into a fist; and then two men came into view. Longish hair, brownish, blondish; about the same height; both shedding expensive ties and suit jackets negligently onto the floor, kicking off shoes. One grabbed the other around the neck, hauled him close in a gesture that made Jack's heart hurt. He couldn't make out their faces for the liplock; but he knew.

"Turn it off," he said.

Daniel stepped past him, touched a control; the image froze. For an eternal second he stared at himself in his mid-twenties, his tongue down Daniel's throat, one arm casually around his neck, the other frozen midway down to his crotch; at Daniel in his mid-twenties, yielding to him, submitting with a melted adoration. Then Daniel pushed the Sleep key, and the screensaver came on.

"Fuck," Jack said softly.

"Yeah," Daniel replied, and straightened, staring out the window.

"They couldn't have fucking emigrated to Outer Mongolia or something? They had to stay in the _same fucking line of work_?"

For a moment Daniel was silent. Then he said, "You told me once that before you were tapped for Special Forces, all you wanted to do was build airplanes and fly them."

"I could have done that in Outer Mongolia," Jack said, truculent, bitter. Struck to the heart. "It's nice there now. Real built up."

"I suppose this was inevitable," Daniel said. "I used to wonder if something like this would ever happen. But I stopped wondering, because I figured if it did happen, it wouldn't be for another decade, and I'd be ... " He didn't finish.

_Another half a year, and I'd have been out of here myself, and I'd never have had to know. Six fucking months._

Daniel leaned down, woke the machine up, started looking at the stick's directory structure. "There's maybe twelve hours of footage here," he said. "It's all from last night." He straightened. "I'm not going to watch it, Jack."

"OK," Jack said. He supposed he had to; he supposed one of them had to. It was possible that all the operative had wanted to clue them in to was that the company they'd be dealing with was run by _them_, and that they were ... involved. But if there was something else he'd been meant to see, then one of them should see it.

Twelve hours. Jesus Christ.

He got up. "Put on some coffee for yourself," he said. "I'm gonna make sandwiches."

"Not really hungry."

"And yet oddly enough you are going to eat. Because I say so." Jack had moved into the kitchen. Daniel was unplugging the pen drives.

"Where do you want this, Jack?"

He was tempted to tell Daniel to put it in with the porn collection in his bedroom. "Just hide it in the sideboard there."

"Too obvious."

"OK, the breakfront then. Whatever."

He heard Daniel open the glass curio cabinet. Heard a clink. "Fits right into your mom's Belleek teabag caddy."

"She's rolling over in her grave."

There was almost nothing Daniel didn't know about his family, his childhood, his youth before the Academy, his life before Special Forces. Or about his career before the Stargate, or his marriage, for that matter. Every classified op he wasn't supposed to tell a soul about, he'd told Daniel about at some point. Daniel was just there, always there at his side, keeping him sane through the last ten years, keeping him functional as the world was about to end again and again. Daniel had accumulated his own set of medals and citations, but the one he really deserved he'd never get: a medal for dealing with Jack all these years. _He should have moved on_, Jack thought. _He wasn't meant to be a sidekick_. But he wasn't a sidekick. He was the heart and soul of the program that Jack was the bodyguard for and Carter had become the driving force behind. It felt like he was a sidekick because Jack was nominally in charge and Daniel didn't slot into the military hierarchy like Carter. But year after year, the program kept owing everything to Daniel. Who took credit for nothing. Who just kept doing his extraordinary work in his extraordinary, quiet way.

They ate at the dining table when Daniel would have eaten standing in the kitchen or taken the sandwich with him on the way back to base. It was something Jack could do -- make sure Daniel sat down and had a decent meal once a day. It was only one o'clock when they finished. Time to go back, he supposed.

Daniel looked up at him, and said, "Are you ever going to retire, Jack?"

_Only if you come with me_. "You think I want to sit around signing requisitions for the rest of my life?"

"So that's a yes."

"Yes that's a yes. What did you think?"

"I don't know."

Jack swallowed. This wasn't how he'd been going to play it. He'd had plans, tactics, strategies. But Daniel had asked. He owed it to him to answer.

"Plans are in motion," he said. He realized that his voice sounded just like Harriman's when he sighed, like Daniel's when he said _OK, Jack_. Hopeless, resigned. "George is working on the Pentagon. I won't go 'til I'm sure they'll tap Carter. She's got a promotion coming, after that thing in the autumn, but she's young for it, or the Old Boys are still being assholes, or I don't know what. It should have come through by now. When it does, George's job gets easier. We've been figuring six months."

"Good," Daniel said, looking down at the table, his empty plate, his nearly empty coffee mug.

"Good because ... ?"

"Just good. Because it's good." He rimmed the mug; Jack hated when he did that. "What'll you do, go up to the lake?"

Jack considered his answer for a long time. Then he said, "I guess that depends on what you're doing when the time comes."

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked, still rimming.

"I mean that I don't see you leaving the program ever. I mean that if you're still in Colorado Springs, no I'm not going to move to Minnesota. That's all I mean."

Jack glanced at the notebook, and thought about the moment that had been freeze-framed there, and abruptly went so hard he couldn't think.

Daniel got up. "Come with me," he said.

Jack said, "Huh?"

Daniel came around the table, practically pulled him out of his chair. "Come with me."

Jack sputtered and protested; he didn't want Daniel to see the hard-on. Daniel dragged him by the sleeve through the kitchen and down to the back hallway. He took a laser photo of the Orion nebula off the wall where the hallway angled toward the bedroom and put it carefully down a couple of feet away. "Daniel, what the fuck are you _doing_?" Jack said.

Then Daniel had him by the shoulders, fists closed on his T-shirt, pressing him back against the wall. "This is the only blind spot in your house," he said, staring Jack in the eyes. "Hughes said no one's watching right now. This is as close to hundred-percent certainty we're ever going to get, and I have to know." He let go of one of Jack's shoulders to cup the side of his head. "Will you let me?"

Jack didn't say _Have to know what?_ Jack didn't say _Let you what?_, although he wasn't sure specifically what Daniel meant. He said, his voice low and hoarse with panic and blind desire, "You don't know? Seventeen years and you don't _know_?"

"I'll do anything for you, Jack," Daniel said, his blue eyes fierce and burning. "Follow you anywhere. Give up anything. Everything. For that, I get to know for sure." His hands dropped, tugged at Jack's belt. Jack palmed the wall to either side, as though breaking a fall. He hissed as his pants were opened. His eyes winced shut as his briefs were pushed down. Daniel said, "Will you let me, Jack?"

"Don't go much for flirtation, do you," Jack gritted out, forcing his eyes open.

Daniel's fierce blue eyes stared back at him, and Daniel's hot, sweaty hand closed around his cock. "We flirted for eight years," he said. "Then we shut down for nine. Way past that now."

"Daniel ... " His eyes glazed and his head banged back softly against the wall as Daniel's hand moved up and tightened on him.

"Can I, Jack?" Daniel said, insistent. "Will you let me?"

"You never needed _permission_," Jack burst out, pushed past any capacity for control by the feel of Daniel's hand on him after all this time -- Daniel's known, familiar, trusted hand. "You had me anytime you wanted me. You were the one who said no."

He groaned and closed his eyes as Daniel went down to his knees. Nearly fifty, and he had knees that bent like that. Nearly fifty, and he still had that boyishness that could have passed for thirty-five. He knew that Daniel was looking at him. Daniel, who made an art form of the lowered gaze, the averted eyes, had his eyes wide open now. Looking at what he was stroking over with his thumb, tracing with his fingers. Making sure it was what he wanted. Making sure he wanted what he thought he wanted. Making sure Jack wouldn't wilt at the touch of his male hand. His male mouth.

"God, Jack," Daniel said, a hushed breath. "You're so beautiful."

He couldn't process that. It was too contrary to what he believed about himself. "Daniel if you do this I'm gonna blow right away," he said in a rush, before hearing himself say it could make him go off. He wanted to say _It wasn't supposed to be like this_ and _Wait, let's do this right_, but he'd fantasized more times than he could count about Daniel shoving him against a wall and going down on him, this was his own wet dream come true, or one of them, and the chapped-silk lips were touching him now and he couldn't have formed words if he tried.

"I want to swallow," Daniel said, against the underside of his head. He whined in response, and Daniel's mouth took him in, a long slide of tongue, damp engulfing breath, and Daniel's mouth closed on him and sucked gently, and he clawed the wall and came in a pulsing gush. Daniel swallowed easily, patiently. He bobbed his head, lips slick and firm, prolonging the orgasm; when the pulses tailed off he just held the wet semi-hard cock in his mouth, stroking it tenderly with his tongue, until it softened. Then he sucked Jack clean, and drew off him.

Jack looked down, overwhelmed with awe and a kind of gratitude, and touched Daniel's hair lightly as Daniel tucked him back into his briefs, buttoned his pants, fastened his belt. Daniel came up as easily as he'd gone down, that thoughtless muscularity, and leaned his hands against the wall to either side of Jack's head. "You should have watched," he said. His voice was thick, sticky. He swallowed, searching Jack's face. He looked young, shocked, vulnerable.

Jack stroked a thumb across Daniel's lower lip. "Believe me," he said softly, "I knew it was you." He cupped Daniel's face, stroked with both thumbs; Daniel's eyes slid closed and he turned his mouth against Jack's palm, his lips parting. "So now you know?" Jack asked.

Daniel nodded into his hand. "That was better than the daydream."

Jack slid one hand around the back of his neck, squeezed. "Yeah. Here too." He glanced down; Daniel's fatigues were tented. If it had been him, he thought, he'd have come just from giving Daniel head. "Daniel," he said. "Look at me."

Daniel's eyes opened behind the glasses, angled up to his. He pressed Daniel's jaw until he was looking at him straight on.

"I want you to do me, Daniel."

Daniel was half senseless with arousal and awe. He didn't understand. "I just ... "

"Fuck me. I want you to fuck me. Now. Will you do that?"

Daniel flushed deeply. His pupils dilated, large and dark within the bright blue. "Um ... "

"You wanted to know. That way we'll know."

"Um ... Jack, there's, um ... a big difference between accepting fellatio from a subordinate and, um ... "

"I know you, Daniel. By tonight you'll have yourself convinced that a mouth's a mouth and I had my eyes closed and the past seventeen years were just me looking for an excuse not to fall in love with a woman who isn't my ex. If we're gonna be sure, let's be really sure."

"We don't have to do that, Jack. I mean ever. I mean that isn't something I'd ... have to ... "

"Bed," Jack said, straightening. "Now."

"It's not _safe_ \-- "

Jack started to push past him but ended up pushing into his arms, pulling him close, burying his face in Daniel's neck. Oh, god, oh, god -- the soft skin under his lips, the smell of him -- "Nothing's ever safe. Enough with the safe." He kissed, and then sucked; Daniel let out a broken sound and writhed. Oh, _god_ that was sweet. "Come on." He set Daniel back, pushed past him into the bedroom. "Guy said no one's watching. For whatever that's worth. Best we're gonna do. Take the opportunity." He went to the nightstand, rummaged through the drawer for the lube he jerked off with, tossed it onto the bed between the pillows. Sat down to unlace his boots. After a moment, Daniel came in and sat down beside him and did the same.

He stood up to strip; Daniel lay back on the bed. Naked, Daniel was breathtaking. Naked and hard, he defied description. Jack had watched a lot of gay porn for a while, trying to understand his own sexuality, remember a kind of lust he'd conditioned himself against for thirty years. Waste of time, he realized now. This one sight of Daniel was all he needed.

Jack stretched out beside him, ran a hand down his body. A tremor went through Daniel. Jack smiled, and then caught Daniel's hand as it moved to take his glasses off. "Leave 'em on," he said. "So you can see what you're doing." What, and who.

"Jack ... "

"Scary, huh?" Jack stroked him again, teasing a nipple, watching it harden.

"I haven't had sex in a long time."

"Hey. If you come before you get in, that still tells you something, right?"

"I don't think this about me."

Jack looked up sharply. Daniel's eyes were dark with desire, and scared, and pained. This wasn't the time to beat around the bush. "Daniel," he said softly. He stroked the other nipple, for something to do with his hand, and because the feel of it under his fingertips was unbelievably good. The hard, smooth bulge of pec, nothing like a woman's breast, and the flat nipple coming to a point as he touched it. "I've been celibate for a lot of years now. Learned how to take care of myself. Your dick won't be the first thing that's gone up there. You won't hurt me. OK?" He smiled, trying to make it reassuring and teasing at the same time. "Assuming you get in."

He knew that Daniel knew that there was a box of sex toys in the bureau. Daniel had known that since they came in here and searched the place when he was cloned. Daniel had suspected as much about that bureau and made sure he was the one to search it. He'd told Jack about that a long time ago. They'd laughed about it. They'd never thanked each other for all the ways they'd been protecting each other over all the years.

When Jack smiled, Daniel's eyes went soft and adoring. He looked helpless. Helplessly in love. Jack had had a lot of doubts over the years. They seemed insane now, idiotic. He'd always known this. They'd always known this. It didn't matter if they could manage intercourse. There was nothing to prove here. Not to him. Not when Daniel looked at him like that.

He stroked Daniel's erection, lightly. Jesus god, talk about beautiful. "OK?" he said again.

"Yeah," Daniel said, almost without breath.

"You OK with the prep, or you want me to do it?"

Daniel smiled, slowly, and reached for the tube. "I want to do it," he said, and added, as Jack rolled over on to his stomach, "But I wouldn't mind watching you sometime."

Jack put his head on his arms and turned it so that he could see Daniel's hand spread gel over himself, just at the bottom of his vision.

"And I guess you don't mind that either," Daniel said, watching him watch.

He grunted in answer, then grunted again, breathlessly, as Daniel rolled up and kneed between his legs and nudged him with the backs of his hands, urging him to spread a little wider. His best refractory period was about an hour these days, but he felt his groin tighten, his whole body trying to get hard. He reached under himself to tug his dick up straight. Daniel palmed his butt with his dry hand, a warm massaging caress, and then stroked slick fingers up the cleft, and found the opening, and probed gently. Gently, and erotically, and with an assurance that Jack hadn't expected. Teasing the nerve endings alive. Waking his body out of its postorgasmic stupor.

Fuck. Fuck. Daniel was good at this. He didn't want to know how Daniel had gotten good at this.

"There hasn't been anyone else," Daniel said. Reading his damned mind. How did he _do_ that? "Just what I learned to do for myself. I want you to know that."

He was embarrassed to be relieved, but the image of Daniel touching himself this way was making his dick start to fill, which freaked him out because it was a physical impossibility, and then Daniel's finger was sliding up into him, pistoning slowly, a little deeper each time, seeking; and then Daniel's finger was crooking down to caress his prostate, and all he could do was moan, raggedly, and spread wider, and push up into it.

Daniel's hand. It was _Daniel's hand_.

Daniel slid his middle finger in and rubbed the gland in tender circles with both fingertips, learning the shape of it, testing the firmness as if he could tell from that how aroused Jack was. He didn't need to keep doing it to open him -- Jack was ready, more than ready -- but he kept at it for a long time, until Jack was moaning continuously, half drugged by arousal and euphoria, the sweet radiating pleasure from the perfect touch on that spot.

Then Daniel's fingers were sliding out. He thought he'd feel three or four go back in, he was waiting for that, desperate for it, craving that touch, that pressure, living human flesh, Daniel's flesh. He jerked, and gasped, when it was the broad, blunt head of Daniel's penis that nudged in tight against the ring of muscle. His anus bloomed open, begging for it. Daniel sank in another quarter-inch without even trying. His arms came down to either side of Jack and braced. His thighs came up warm against the back of Jack's. Jack moaned "God, yes, _yes_," and Daniel pushed inside him.

For a second they both froze. Jack waited for twisting panic to grip his body and try to reject the sensation of being breached, violated. He waited for burning pain. It didn't come. Instead, as his mind caught up with what was happening to his body, he melted in a heat of need. "More," he said, a breathless sob.

Daniel pushed all the way into him, and sank down onto him, digging arms underneath to wrap around his chest and hold him. Daniel moved in him, not thrusting, just moving, a supple arch of spine and flex of hips. "Jack I want you to come," he said, a yearning moan. "I really want you to come but I can't, I can't ... "

"Don't stop."

"It's so good."

"Don't stop."

"It's so good, it's so, you're so ... oh god, I can't, it's so ... "

"I love you, Daniel."

"Oh my _god_ ... Jack ... Jack, Jack, Jack, Jack, _Jack_ \-- "

Jack could never in his life have imagined what it would feel like to have the person he loved orgasm inside his body. He didn't know when he started to come, when the mindblowing pulse of contraction and ejaculation started to be his as well as Daniel's; feeling Daniel come like this was like coming himself, there was no difference, it was all one thing. He clawed at the headboard, groped for Daniel's head; they were bucking so hard the bed was creaking, he could hear the low bass twang of springs in the depths of mattress below them. It was hard, and wrenching, and it passed too quickly, leaving him stunned and utterly spent. And even then, Daniel felt just as good inside him. Inside him, on top of him, against him. Melted into him, merged with him, joined.

This was what he'd wanted. He'd had Daniel beside him for sixteen of the last eighteen years. But this was how close he'd needed Daniel to be.

"Jack," Daniel said, slurred, poleaxed.

"Daniel," Jack said, soft, certain.

"I should ... pull out, or ... "

"I don't want you to."

"OK." Daniel didn't seem capable of movement anyway. He stayed where he was until their breath and heartbeat slowed, until the last of the shudders passed. Then he groaned softly and said, "I'll fall asleep. I can't. We're due back."

"OK," Jack said. He winced as Daniel drew slowly, gingerly out of him, winced at the sticky disconnection, the yawning absence inside, the leak of fluid, the chill air on his back and legs. Then he laughed, out loud, because Daniel had reached the Kleenex box off the nightstand and put it on his back and was wadding tissues up into his butt, wiping him.

"Does seem kind of symbolic," Daniel agreed, launching a wad of tissues through the circular rim of the wastebasket.

Jack turned inside Daniel's arms and hauled him close, the cardboard box rolling off him and away. He breathed Daniel's name into his neck. Squeezed. Nuzzled. Tried very hard and very unsuccessfully not to think about how this was it for the next few months. He already knew all the arguments, his and Daniel's, and he knew that Daniel's caution would win.

"That went well," Daniel said, smiling against his ear.

"I don't want to let go," Jack said.

"I know. Neither do I." Daniel pushed back and looked at him, and blinked, and smiled again, half shy, half ... something else. "Wow. That's a good look for you."

"Yeah," Jack said softly. "You too." The postcoital flush and sparkle, the spiky sweat-damp hair, were probably the most heartachingly beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Daniel rolled back to look at the bedside clock. "Shower," he said. It was two o'clock.

Jack sat on the john for a few minutes and got into the shower as Daniel was getting out, setting the water a little colder, and came out to find Daniel dressed and the comforter pulled from the bed. He got a spare from the closet; Daniel put it on the bed and took the other one down to the basement washer while Jack got dressed. When he came back up, Jack was rummaging in the utility closet. "Now I know I'm gay," Jack said. "I'm looking for a fucking blowdryer."

Daniel came up behind him, slid arms around him, pressed warm lips against the back of his neck. "Just towel it again. It'll be dry by the time we get back."

"Better be," Jack grumbled. "It's bad enough I smell all soapy and clean. Walter's gonna be giving me funny looks."

"Don't you ever work out at lunchtime?" He felt Daniel grin. "In the gym, I mean."

"Not anymore."

"Sucks being general."

"Really kinda does." He turned, slung his arms over Daniel's shoulders. "Not for much longer, though."

"We're not going to argue about ... "

"No. But I'm gonna see what I can do to expedite things."

"Good." Daniel traced the chain of his dogtags under his T-shirt. "Good."

"Daniel ... "

"Yeah. Me too."

In the truck on the ride back, they talked about the guys on the recording. Jack still wanted Carter to deal with them. Daniel didn't think that would be fair. Jack told him he was welcome to go with her. Daniel said he'd think about it. Jack said, "You know, Carter knows. So it's not like there's something to keep her from finding out." Daniel said, "I know she knows. I didn't know you knew she knew." Jack started to say _But does she know that I know that you know she knows?_ and Daniel said, "Don't," and Jack hid a smile.

Maybe Daniel would go with her. Jack wouldn't. Jack had told the clone not to keep in touch, and he'd meant it. Bad enough seeing the robot again. Bad enough knowing exactly what that robot had been doing with his robot Daniel, and seeing exactly what losing Daniel had turned him into. He didn't want to know what he could have done with a second chance at his life. He didn't want to see his clone again, and he didn't want to see Daniel's. He didn't need his own private psychological analogue of the entropic cascade effect. And if he felt that way, chances were the clone did, too, and the biggest favor he could do the guy -- do himself -- was to stay the hell out of his way.

But he grabbed the files back from Carter's office and looked them over before he went home, and that night, alone in his house, he tucked into that blind spot in the hallway, put the notebook on his lap, plugged the drive into the port and played the rest of the recording.

His clone took Daniel's on their dining-room table. He took him deep, and slow, Daniel's legs on his shoulders, his arms cradling Daniel's thighs, his hands working between Daniel's legs. Daniel's arms were over his head, his hands gripping the edge of the tabletop. He was _so young_. Slender and beautiful, not as bulked up as this Daniel, more like the Daniel he'd first met but with an incongruously stylish haircut. It was Daniel's body -- but missing the appendectomy scar, missing the shadows of staff-blast burns, all the scars that Oma had copied intact onto this Daniel; missing the scars from the torture in Nicaragua, the injuries on Tegalus. There was a scar diagonally down his ribcage that this Daniel didn't have. But he'd started as a clean slate. A cleaner, purer slate even than the body Oma Desala had returned.

_Is he the only one you've ever had?_ Jack asked him, silently, watching him convulse on the table in a spectacular orgasm. He'd almost bet money on it. He'd bet that they'd bunked up within a week, spent high school pretending to be each other's fathers on the phone, covering for each other, taking care of each other. They wouldn't have touched each other sexually for a couple of years, till they stopped looking so much like kids, maybe even feeling like kids; and then he'd bet that they'd have spent a year just giving each other handjobs, blowjobs, nothing heavier than that. They'd had plenty of time. They'd had a lifetime ahead of them. And they'd had their virginity to give each other. Or at least their bodies' virginity.

He got so turned on, watching the slow, intense fuck on the dining table on the screen, that his shorts were sticky with precome. He didn't do anything about it. He didn't open his pants to ease himself. He wasn't going to jerk off to a recording of someone with his DNA and five-sixths of his memories doing someone with Daniel's DNA and four-fifths of his memories. Those fractions made a big difference. An even bigger difference to the guys on the screen.

He watched them clean up, make dinner, eat on the same table where they'd fucked, then clear it and spread computers and charts and printouts all over it and work together with intense, shared focus. His erection went down. He left the recording running and took a leak, brushed his teeth, changed into sweats. Went back to where he'd been sitting and found that the footage had switched to the bedroom camera. Thought it was going to devolve into pornography again, but what made a pain go through his heart wasn't the sight of a young, buff version of himself balling a young, gorgeous Daniel but, instead, the way they got into bed -- the thoughtless, casual familiarity of people who'd slept together for years, people who took a shared bed for granted. The way he'd used to get into bed with Sara. Laughing, chatting; one of them doing a crossword; one of them grumping about the light. The way they tucked into each other, wrapped around, the easy twine of limbs.

For the next five hours, he watched them sleep.

One would turn, and the other would turn. They never lost contact, never turned away from each other. Daniel slept on his back, one or both hands flung over his head; the clone would sprawl over him. When Daniel turned and curled up on his side, the clone spooned up behind him, wrapping around him. When one of them slept uneasily, the other one murmured and soothed without entirely waking. Jack found that the volume key worked, that there was sound. He was almost sorry he'd realized that. He almost muted it. But he didn't. He turned it up. He listened to them murmur. Daniel talked in his sleep, in different languages. He'd always done that. The clone snored softly, not at all the obnoxious sawing that Sara used to accuse him of. The covers tangled down around their legs. The clone woke, and gathered Daniel against him, and pulled the covers up over their shoulders, and lay awake for a while, staring into the darkness.

Daniel stirred, turned. When he spoke, his voice was a shock to Jack. It was Daniel's voice, but different. Younger, but absent the stutter he'd had back when Jack had met him; younger and much older at the same time. "Stop thinking about them," that voice said. Under the covers, Jack could see his hips push against the clone's.

"I was thinking more about us," the clone said quietly. "About the first times."

"Mmm." Daniel smiled into his neck. "Never gets old, though, does it."

_Jesus_, Jack thought. _They're talking about us._

He watched that Daniel go down on that him, push fingers up inside, work him expertly 'til he came. He watched a copy of his own twentysomething face glaze with climax and not look nearly as dorky as he'd always figured he looked when he came, and hoped that meant maybe he didn't either. He listened to his own voice -- younger and so much older -- call Daniel 'Danny,' and felt the weirdest stab of jealousy. He watched them fuck again -- slow at first, easy, and then deep and raw and hard -- and he came inside his sweats without touching himself, without wanting to, unable to stop it and unable to tear his eyes away. He ignored the spreading sticky wetness. He watched them sink down, melt into a heaving lump, just the way he and Daniel had a matter of hours ago. He could just make out the Daniel clone say, "You're scared. You get like that when you're scared. Needing it hard like that," and he heard himself answer, "I know. It's OK. I'm OK. You're here. Go to sleep."

He wondered what scared a clone who'd lived in ease and safety for ten years. Then Daniel said, "It might not be them. It probably won't be them." And he knew.

_He_ was. He and Daniel were.

Seeing what they would have become, if they hadn't broken off from the timeline of their lives, had to walk away from everything they knew.

His clone said they'd cross that bridge. His clone said, "I love you, Daniel. I love you so _fucking_ much."

"I love you too," Daniel's clone said softly, his face buried in his clone's sandy hair, his body wrapped protectively around.

Jack watched them sleep, then wake up enough to fuck again, intensely, their fingers laced, hands fisting together. He almost stopped the playback -- he didn't need to see any more, and it was dawn anyway, he had to shower and get to work, get a few gallons of coffee into him -- but it was so close to the end that he let it play through.

There wasn't anything more of note. They woke up, his clone headed for the shower, Daniel's clone headed for the coffeemaker. For the first time all night, Jack felt an eerie simulation of real time, as though he were watching what they were doing right now, this morning, wherever they were. And maybe this was almost exactly what they were doing right now, in that apartment. It didn't matter. He'd seen enough. He'd seen enough to know that neither he nor Daniel could be the ones to deal with the clones of themselves.

_I wouldn't do that to you_, he told the screen as the playback ended and the window went black. _Might be a little tough seeing Carter. But it won't be us._

It would suck for Carter, too; he'd have to give her the heads-up first thing, if she hadn't already seen the names John Neal and Daniel Ballard in the file and deduced it herself. Truth was, it would suck period. But it would make the question of security clearance a whole hell of a lot less problematic. And once they all got over the jolt, it might even get funny. At the very least, Carter would never _ever_ stop ragging him about the clone's academic performance. "MIT?" she'd say every now and then, and he'd growl, "Carter ... ," and she'd make that little lip-biting face, and everything would be OK again, for a while. Everything would be normal.

_It won't be us._

He didn't care what package Daniel came in. That cloned Daniel used to be someone he knew, someone he loved. He wouldn't see any harm come to that Daniel, any more than to the one who'd stayed with him here. He wouldn't do anything to hurt him. But that Daniel wasn't Daniel anymore. That Daniel wasn't his Daniel, and that Jack wasn't him.

_They aren't us._

Before he went to shower and shave, he went out back to the shed and fired up his pottery kiln. After he'd dressed and had some cereal, he flipped open his encrypted cell; though it was 0830 in D.C., George would have been in the office for an hour already, but this wasn't the kind of call you wanted to route through the White House switchboard, so he called George's cell, which was equally encrypted.

"Jack," George said warmly, after two rings.

"Good morning, Mr. President."

"Can the formality, Jack. I've got seven minutes before my aides start swooping in here. What can I do for you?"

Jack explained the situation with the clones, then said, "You know that retirement thing we've been talking about?"

"Not ready to write your book just yet?"

"On the contrary -- I was wondering if we could move the timetable up. Any way we could shoot for, I don't know, three months instead of six?"

"A deal with a powerhouse like Neal-Ballard would make for something of a hat trick for Colonel Carter after that mission last fall and the breakthrough she made on the hand devices. Have you assigned her to the negotiating team?"

"It's R&amp;D. That's her baby. She'll head it up."

"Good, Jack. Good. If that goes well, we'll be able to move things along smartly. I do have to ask you one question, though. I've been holding off asking you, but it's going to come up."

"Go ahead," Jack said warily.

"Will Doctor Jackson be resigning upon your retirement?"

"I don't know," Jack said honestly. "Should I ask him?"

"That's up to you. But I'd like to be able to assure Oversight and the Joint Chiefs that he won't. One reason they've been resistant to replacing you is that they're concerned about losing Doctor Jackson. They think of you as ... well, sort of a set."

"You've been keeping me on to keep _Daniel_?" Jack barked.

"No, Jack. But it's a concern. If you want to speed this up, the more we can grease that concern away the better."

Daniel had asked him if he'd be moving to Minnesota. Did that mean Daniel wanted to stay or go? "Actually, sir, I can't imagine Daniel leaving the SGC under any circumstances. Life's work and all that."

"Actually, Jack, I can imagine some very specific circumstances under which he would," George said, just short of blunt.

Jack blinked at the wall for a second, then said, "I'll make sure not to initiate those circumstances."

"If you do, I suspect that we'll be able to find things to keep you entertained in your retirement," George said, with a hint of his old chuckle. Then he had to cut the call as his aides swooped in right on schedule, and Jack, now late for work, got his ass in gear.

He went down to the basement workbench, put the wiped memory stick in a vise, whacked it in half with a hammer, ran both halves under a big magnet he rummaged out of the depths of the junk drawer, wrapped them in a handkerchief and whacked them up into a bunch more pieces and crunched those up some in the vise, and went back out to the shed.

"Thanks, guys," he said, as he shook the handful of surveillance debris into the kiln. "I owe you one."

When he and Daniel didn't show up at the handshake meeting the next week, he figured they'd be even.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Youth Is Wasted On the Young](https://archiveofourown.org/works/70256) by [Princess of Geeks (Princess)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks)
  * [Same Old Slippers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/70255) by [Princess of Geeks (Princess)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princess/pseuds/Princess%20of%20Geeks)




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